South Africa to Deploy 25,000 Troops Against Looting that has Left People without Functioning Hospitals

The photo shows an empty grocery aisle in Johannesburg, South Africa, due to panic buying. (Photo courtesy of Aleksandar Bulovic’, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

South Africa will deploy 25,000 troops to counter looting and riots that engulfed the country this week. Over 70 people have died during the riots, which began after the imprisonment of a former South African president on corruption charges.

Stuart Gordon, Human Resources Director at Trans World Radio (TWR) Africa, says, “We have some 200 shopping centers that have been vandalized, and even burned to the ground. We have some towns, for example, Howick, that have become ghost towns. It was totally destroyed and burned to the ground.”